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Brown CS Department Hiring Student Diversity, Inclusion Advocates
theodp writes: Brown University's Department of Computer Science is seeking to hire student advocates for diversity and inclusion as part of its new action plan to increase diversity. The new hires, who will also serve as members of the CS Diversity Committee, will support students, plan inclusion activities, and educate TAs on issues of diversity. Also on the diversity front, Brown touted last weekend's Hack@Brown, the school's annual student hackathon, as being "unlike any other hackathon" -- welcoming, inclusive, and inviting to students of all experience levels." A cynic might point out that Hack@Brown's tech giant sponsors boast track records that are quite the opposite. By the way, Brown@Hackathon certainly upped the ante on conference Codes of Conduct, warning that those anonymously-charged with making others feel uncomfortable on the basis of "gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion (or lack thereof)" will be "expelled from the event without travel reimbursement at the discretion of the event organizers." Brown explained that travel reimbursements were provided to promote "economic diversity", ensuring that students who couldn't otherwise afford to get to and from Providence could attend the Ivy League event. Hey, what "economically diverse" kid wouldn't want to go to a conference where rubbing someone the wrong way could leave them stranded in Rhode Island!
>warning that those anonymously-charged with making others feel uncomfortable on the basis of "gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion (or lack thereof)" will be "expelled from the event without travel reimbursement at the discretion of the event organizers."
Waitwaitwait. You mean if some Anonymous decides to make up some bullshit they can get anyone expelled without questions?
I imagine that only apply to people that aren't "diverse" enough or "equal" enough, or that would quickly become a problem.
I can report fraud to the police anonymously in my country. Doesn't mean the accused will be investigated though. I'd have to provide some evidence, more than just accusations.
But hay, don't let that spoil the rage-fest.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Pity to see good intentions paired with such an unbalanced plan to enact those intentions.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
How is this shit news?
Dear Mr. whiplash:
These diversity stories:
-have little, if anything, to do with technology (The sociology of the software industry is not itself technology.)
-attract outsiders from both sides with an agenda to push
-inspire a lot of vitriolic posts from both sides
-persuades no one and generates ill will from both extremes and the people who have a more centrist position
Can we simply not have these anymore? It may be good for attracting page impressions but it results such bad feeling among posters that it doesn't make business sense to allow them when you're trying to revive /.s fortunes.
Seriously? Do they send them to a neighboring school for the hard subjects?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's the same guy almost every time.
How can you be "stranded" in Rhode Island? It's what, all of 20 miles over to the next state?
One can make substantial criticisms of the way Brown and some other universities are approaching these issues, but the summary seems a bit off. Yes, it is possible to file a complaint about harassment anonymously but the form makes clear that isn't likely to get much attention by itself. The form says "This form is anonymous, unless you choose to provide a contact method in the case of something that requires follow up."
As for codes of conduct in general, there's a certain fraction of people who aren't apparently happy with them. However, it is pretty clear that a lot of people at conferences and conventions are sexually harassed sometimes severely. Unfortunately, there are circumstances where organizers have erred heavily on the side of not doing anything, and other situations where they've erred too far in the other direction. As always, the key is to strike a reasonable balance, and some issues will always go too far one way or another, and those instances will be used as political ammunition for whichever side the anecdote supports.
You could have hired lecturers instead, but I guess this is more important.
It's "whipslash". Slash, like Slashdot. Get it? Just playing. Your concern will be taken into account.
Stop hazing us, BIZX. We're just nerds. We're not bad people. We and our industries aren't hostile to women, or minorities, or transgenders, or disabled people.
Stop hazing us, Brown. We're not like those sour hipsters who work for/with your offices. We're just nerds. Stop injecting sex and politics and religion into our jobs and pastimes and pursuits. Many of us chose these fields in part to get away from that. Stop labeling programmers as "men", "women", "[RACE HERE]", etc, etc and telling us how we oppressed everybody simply by existing. We have usernames and handles to escape our meatspace identities.
This has to stop. These stories have to stop. The politics and the propaganda has to stop.
Tech doesn't have a problem. The media has a problem with tech. This hazing has to stop.
Did you really read it? I don't think you did. They even put the self-contradictory parts in bold text!
Let me quote them here for you:
Which is soon after followed by:
I see the second quote as a threat directed at event participants. It threatens them with being "sanctioned" or "expelled". This can even be done "without reimbursement". To make things worse, it's the "event organisers" themselves who would be making good on this threat! Worst of all, it sounds like the threat can be carried out arbitrarily and without oversight or consistency, as it's "at the discretion" of the event organizers!
I don't know about you, but I see threats of arbitrary, inconsistent punishment, carried out without oversight, as being a form of severe harassment.
So I don't see how they can serious claim to "not tolerate harassment", while at the same time promising to engage in behavior that I, and I think any reasonable person, would sure as hell consider to be a form of harassment! Even if they didn't actually punish anyone, I see the mere threat of such punishment as being a form of harassment, too.
You do realize that your list is likely the very reason these sorts of people push this crap? One other thought: Taking the mean between two opposing sides is not automatically the truth or the correct solution.
Stop commenting on these stupid stories about generation butthurt.
You only encourage more of them with their make believe issues and hurt feelings.
The fastest way to diversify tech companies is to not buy any hardware from software companies that don't have a 50/50 radio of male to female, and whatever the correct percentages are for blacks, hispanics, asians, whites.
What, you just want the best tech? You uncaring citizen!
Now it is aiming for a mix as average as possible. Next will be that confirmed idiots will get a quota in order to make sure all classes of mental capability are equally represented. This is madness.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
and indoctrinateTAs on issues of diversity.
FTFY
Just another day in Paradise
Can you please do something about the harmful posting limits? They're very stifling for us legitimate users, and they don't stop users like apk anyway.
Slashdot needs as much discussion as it can get, which means we need to be able to post lots of comments reasonably quickly. We can't do that when the posting limits interfere with our ability to post comments here. Not being able to post comments means we can't engage in thorough, in-depth discussions.
I propose a simple 2-minute delay between comments, per IP address. That lets us have intelligent, in-depth discussions, while preventing spammers from posting lots of junk comments. That delay would impose the daily limit, too.
We want to see Slashdot succeed again, but that can't happen as long as these archaic Dice-era policies are getting in the way.
Dear Mr. AC, some of us like these stories. As far as I'm aware it's not mandatory to read them, so if they bother you please feel free to skip to the next one.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
2nded.
The entire concept of delivering the ideology of Diversity and Feminism to a bunch of geeks on a long-standing technology news website has had the net effect of killing the readership while radicalizing and dividing the group.
Feminism is a failed ideology; it's core tenant is giving women additional rights and privileges without giving them new duties and responsibilities. The net result is plummeting birth rates and marriage rates, well-to-do men eschewing family life, and "non standard" families becoming the norm in developed countries. It is so incredibly obvious now. We're seeing Incest Pornography gaining unprecedented popularity because there are so many "non standard" families where the children of step parents live together; the net results are horriffic. Anti-feminism is now more popular than feminism, among women! The consensus there being "Women should have added duties and responsibilities but we aren't sure what those should be"; there's a very constructive and fulfilling debate to be had there.
Diversity is a failed ideology; by rewarding individuals for compulsory group membership with entitlements, you forcing upon the majority of the group and through social association you are forcing upon the fringes of the group through peer pressure, a belief of self-entitlement which distorts the concept of accomplishment. To accomplish something there must be adversity; for a group to build meaningful relationships there must be adversity to drive the sacrifices and decisions that bind them together. Why, oh why, do I walk past the diversity and inclusion office at my College and notice the wall lined with books that preach anger? I don't see any Martin Luther King, hell I don't see any Miles Davis or Lois Armstrong; without those two guys we'd still think opera is music and likely the entire field of psycho-acoustics would have never been born. I'd argue Armstrong and Davis did more for the civil rights movement than even MLK. Our country is so much richer culturally and artistically because of African participation in its history yet we don't take that seriously because for the last 80 years a bunch of idiots in holly-wood decided to make fun of blacks in every way imaginable on the silver screen. We celebrate nothing of the accomplishments and advancements in communication, literature, art or music that Africans bring to our country and we celebrate all of the persecution. They are undoubtedly one of the most targeted groups for psychological warfare ever, absolutely unbelievable. Shattering some viewpoints here; When you get a women on the 5 O'clock news saying "Obama is prez I ain't gotta pay no mo' rent" she is NOT talking about welfare, she's talking about sharecropping, AND SHE IS RIGHT! These people have a far stronger grasp on the concept of being taken advantage of than most whites. Black and want to spread some love with Whitey? Make up a term for a white man that gets taken advantage of everyone that makes whites feel guilty about being taken advantage of, and just make sure that is recognizable as originating from the culture and language of American Blacks; they will love you for it and it will be a far more powerful weapon against "diversity" than some college parties like in this article.
Finally and in closing, the IT Industry is Overwhelmingly Meritocratic; this is true for any profession where you are managing both the evaluation and criteria to optimize a solution. When you post what I can only classify as bee-ess as a representative of dice holdings, it reflects poorly upon the offering because you have lost your objectivity. Professionals with sufficiently advanced degree's and project portfolio's will determine your offering is inferior to your competitors because they will not be presented to employers with other suitable candidates. Employers may also make the determination that they may be presented with a less suitable selection of candidates than they might find on other sites as well.
So please stop. Please. Just Stop. The core demographic has fled elsewhere and you are now creating content for a demographic and readership that doesn't exist and never will.
nah, 'reactionary' better fits these social justice types thinking everything is racist and sexist all the time.
if they bother you please feel free to skip to the next one.
Not unlike the hiring practices of white supremacists. Look in the mirror some time and see what you have become.
The entire concept of delivering the ideology of Diversity and Feminism to a bunch of geeks on a long-standing technology news website has had the net effect of killing the readership while radicalizing and dividing the group.
This is the intended result. Radicalized, divided groups are too busy squabbling to notice being robbed.
I TAed a class at an Ivy League CS department last semester. It was sad to see that students would rather wait in line to talk to me (a male TA) during office hours than approach the available female TA sitting next to me. This behavior does not help anyone. This is probably the kind of problem that Brown's student advocates will be addressing, not recommending to fire/expell faculty/students or influencing faculty hire decisions.
It makes it easier to replace them with outsourced companies in India. All part of the plan.
PC = you cannot notice anything in reality that does not conform to the liberal narrative. In this case, if we were thinking clearly, we would see these tolerance officers as a form of political control designed to destroy the historical majority in the USA.
As Plato wrote:
These people are supposed to be educated.
Instead, they're on a bullshit, zero tolerance (thus zero thought) kick and terrified of being labeled in any way shape or form.
This is what we're teaching our kids now...
And people wonder why this country's in trouble. We have mental defectives in charge of education...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The sociology of the software industry is not itself technology
So you're really old or really young to be spouting this isolationist shit. Alas you can't disappear into your man-cave for 40-plus hours a week and have all those non-technical people disappear. Look at the schools: People do meddle with sociology and they do have a large effect. It's not limited to self-important SJWs either. All the other departments where you work, have to deal with you: That's a society of sorts, with rules and hierarchy, which affect YOU. Ignore it at your own peril.
If you don't want to deal with other people you shouldn't be communicating with people in the society of Slashdot readers. Go get your technology news from the sanitized press releases of Microsoft, Google and Stanford university and CalTech (not the only institutions with a tech focus, but I'm not listing them all). The rest of us want to read the personal anecdotes of our fellow readers. As already mentioned, if there's too much SJW click-bait, skip the article; if there's too much (American) political whining, skip the article.
Yeah! It's full of hateful white feminists with blogs who don't know jack about technology except it pays well and misogyny!
Maybe ladies should have cracked a book in highschool rather than banging the QB.
But let me guess, tech books are sexist too right?
It may be good for attracting page impressions but it results such bad feeling among posters that it doesn't make business sense to allow them when you're trying to revive /.s fortunes.
If the geek can't accept an open and frank discussion of gender issues in tech, then Slashdot has no future.
What is it to be here, a white male fraternity of insecure adolescents who circle the wagons whenever a breath of fresh air threatens the status quo?
Do you work in the tech industry you racist fuckwit? Trust me, even in a country with a majority white population there are not shortage of Indians working in the industry.
Take your reactionary racist bullshit elsewhere you racist cunt.
I have an inclusive and diverse response to this story. It includes the words "fuck", "off" and "die".
Yay me!
Of course it is.
Oh, sorry, I thought I was at Wikipedia.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Have Brown CS tried hiring people based solely on their ability to write code?
It's "whipslash". Slash, like Slashdot. Get it? Just playing. Your concern will be taken into account.
Whoops, I'm sorry about that. My memory must be slipping. :)
Dear Mr. AC, some of us like these stories. As far as I'm aware it's not mandatory to read them, so if they bother you please feel free to skip to the next one.
Having the inevitable rhetorical barroom brawl that erupts after each of these stories is hard on the customers and bad for business, neither of which is conducive to the continued success of Slashdot. With respect, the fact that you may derive some form of enjoyment from said brawls is entirely beside the point. It is not simply a matter of "moving on to the next story".
Things work best when the best show up, throw down and whoever is best is best.
Any other consideration is another move towards forced mediocrity that doesn't make us better, it makes us all worse.
The best will go elsewhere. That's the way it always works.
Booth staff (including volunteers) should not use sexualised clothing/uniforms/costumes, or otherwise create a sexualised environment.
We're talking about university students here. Students are not supposed to create a sexualised environment? Good luck with that. What people wear is their own choice, within reasonable limits. Of course staff should not wear KKK costumes. Many people feel "offended" and sexualised by women not covering their arms and hair -- so should all women wear veils?
Then maybe, I don't know, go to some site for which these stories are appropriate? I like porn but I don't expect slashdot to put any on the front page.
With Brown trying so aggressively to stuff their CS departments with underrepresented groups who don't meet the same standards as white and Asian men, I know exactly who I would be asking to study with: The white and Asian men, who I know got there on merit alone. So now, race and gender are things I suddenly have to care about when trying to figure out who in the room knows their shit. Even if the old stereotypes are false, Brown created an environment in which they made the stereotypes true, and then passed some Stalinist dictate that we must never mention this. I don't see what good this does.
I think that discussing these issues is a very important aspect of technology. Although there are those who have posted comments to this article and argued that sociology of technology and technology should not be confused, I completely disagree. As more and more of society depends on the software and technology that the readers of /. produce, the more and more important it becomes that we discuss these issues.
I was initially proud that /. had decided to post an article about this on its front page. I thought that perhaps the new overlords were going to take this seriously. Instead, they simply wasted an opportunity by posting a childish article summary. What could have been a good chance to promote a discussion was wasted.
I hope that /. will evolve and recognize the importance of these issues and present them in a manner that promotes discussion. I care about discussing these issues openly and factually than I do about what *you* actually decide. As long as we have an open, honest discussion, I think that's what matters. Framing the discussing like /. editors did in this case is absolutely not helpful.
Will
remove nospam. to email!
If you don't like it, scroll on by.
Not all of us are narrowminded basement dwellers... Some of us are actually interested in things beyond neckbeard technology articles. (Which isn't what made Slashdot great in the first place.)
It's really important. Even if you hate this Brown plan for some reason, it could still have a huge affect on your life (and career) for a long time.
That is why it's News for Nerds.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
No, the rest of us doesn't. (Different AC here... original poster was right.)
If there's too much to scroll by, I'll just close the /. tab.
At the very core of modern anti-intellectualism, much of which would have classically been categorized as insanity, is that it cannot ever apply its own standards to itself and cannot live within its own rules or by its purported standards.
Tolerance is the art/skill/practice of NOT reacting against things you disagree with. A man who personally believes homosexuality is wrong, but who treats his gay neighbor fairly is "Tolerant"; if the same man was "intolerant" he might be a "gay basher". A gay man who knows his neighbor believes homosexuality is immoral, but who treats him fairly is "Tolerant"; if the same man was "intolerant", he might round up a group of friends and try to intimidate his neighbor's employer to fire him.
The modern college campus version of "tolerance" however is the inverse: it denounces and punishes anybody who disagrees on anything. The phoney faux-tolerants, particularly in colleges and universities, demand that everybody agree with them on the definitions of all the special special categories of people they divide everyone into, the political and social opinions that are "acceptable", and then have zero actual tolerance for any diversity of opinions.
Don't agree on THEIR decisions about what groups to define and who belongs in those groups? They cannot tolerate you.
Don't agree on THEIR preferences for public policy related to the groups THEY have defined? They cannot tolerate you.
Don't speak the words they demand you say? They cannot tolerate you
The only way these vile people succeed in this is by controlling the institutions of education and substituting propaganda and social manipulation for what used to be called "education".
This is because, as we all know, the secret to the best computer science education is evenly distributed racial and genital characteristics.
The ironic part is that the SJWs aren't helping the people they claim to be, because universities who cave to pressure and pull stunts like these just get their names added to the "shitcan resumes from these universities" lists almost immediately.
OK, so getting the bullies kicked out for complaining about our body size, that can only benefit us hacker nerds. If we could only get them kicked out for complaining about our body odour as well, we'd be golden!
Stefan Axelsson
You offended me for pointing out facts.
Subject says it all: please, Mr. Whipslash: I think sociological issues surrounding our fields are extremely important. Don't censure them just because Anonymous Coward might be scared. (S)he is a chicken, anyway.
Says so an anonymous coward.
While you're taking the concerns into account bear in mind tht plenty of us see that things like this as relavent. It's about rules at a major hackathon---how is that not news for nerds. And if there are things we're doing to make tech a boys only club, we'd rather hear about them than pretend everything is fine because we can't bear to have our precious feelings hurt.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Is it called that because it's full of Indians?
Does Brown have diversity quotas for the people they hire as Inclusion Advocates? Every time I've seen similar programs the straight white male demographic was seriously under represented.
This is exactly the kind of politically correct garbage that has led to the rise of Donald Trump. Be careful what you wish for. What Brown, and many other Universities I suspect, is doing is reverse discrimination. Plain and simple. White males are getting screwed over at the expense of people of color.
Were there injustices in the past? Sure, just ask the Jewish, Irish, Chinese and Italians. Not to mention Native Americans. But how does tipping the scales the other way help? All it does is promote resentment. Meanwhile the diversity fanboys prance around claiming the world is a better place.
What ever happened to earning your way based on merit? Schools, of all places, aught to be promoting this. Education should be the great equalizer. It is one of the few areas where you can succeed solely on hard work, talent and drive. There are countless examples of people that have succeeded in higher education despite coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and despite not being a white male.
What really makes this infuriating is the corporations lining up to support it. The end game for them is more H1-B visas. By promoting diversity they help to indoctrinate the idea that we should have more people of color in IT jobs. And where do you suppose those people are coming from? Well, they are not coming from the UK or Europe. They are coming primarily from India, China and increasingly from Vietnam and the Philippines. It is nothing more than a cheap source of labor.
Now getting back to Trump. Love him or hate him events like this are giving rise to people like him. People that see America getting taken advantage of again and again. People that see our generosity being taken for granted. People that observe others that shun our laws. People that see our jobs disappearing. They see all of this and they are pissed off. Pissed off that our elected officials not only stand by and allow it to occur - they actively participate in it.
Not all of us are narrowminded basement dwellers... Some of us are actually interested in things beyond neckbeard technology articles. (Which isn't what made Slashdot great in the first place.)
Then find them elsewhere. There's whole Internet out there with all the inclusiveness debate and articles a person interested in them could want, and then some.
This is a technology oriented site, there's only more technology out there and diluting the content to make it some kind of catch-all site for things doesn't make this site better, it makes it worse. What made Slashdot great wasn't stories about hot button social issues, but stories about technology. Technology has only multiplied since I signed up -- there were no tablets, smartphones, solid state disks, etc etc etc" 10+ years ago.
Inclusiveness and other related debates are largely political and sociological -- you could just find-replace "IT" with "law" or "marketing" or "accounting" or any other field and largely have the same debate.
And calling it "a debate" is pretty thin to begin with, it's more of a set of accusations by one side who then use the terms of their own accusations to negate any opposition. 'White males in $field are privileged and use their privilege to suppress $group." "No, they aren't." "Your privilege prevents you from seeing the problem, your arguments are invalid."
In a universe where posting a story "dilutes" anything, your comment would make sense. But we don't live in such a universe.
What made Slashdot great was it carried a large variety of stories related to technology and science - not that it catered to a subset of ignorant and narrow minded neckbeards.
You don't want to read it, scroll on by. The grownups want to have an adult conversation.
For the record, I think this news is fine.
It'd be hard to understand what she is saying if all you can think about are the things you'd like to do with her.
It's easy to say "well stop being so horny" but the boner doesn't listen.
It's news that is relevant to nerds, and it is stuff that matters, regardless of which side of the debate you sit.
Only the white man is asked to deny his own kind while others do as is natural and feel affinity for their own.
Only the white man would deny his own kind if it means gaining power for himself.
The white man enslaves and exploits even his own.
What does this say about the character of the white man?
In Soviet Russia, the military had a commanding officer. He was placed there on the basis of knowledge of tactics, weapons, command ability, and the ability to enact victory, or at the very least, reduce the gains of an overwhelming enemy. His second (and shadow) was a political control officer. The PCO could supercede the authority of the commander due to political circumstances as they arose (or not). Many a battle was lost (rarely if ever won) because the PCO would take charge in order to "make it look better" in the eyes of overseers. The technology industry is not like the NBA. The National Basketball Association has a huge number of workers who get paid an overwhelming salary, and are from predominantly one race. Its all good. The technology industry has a huge number of workers who get paid a not-so-overwhelming salary, and in this case one race is fundamentally evil, and the subject of "Social Justice Warrior Terrorism". Here, the Social Justice Warriors can skip the idea of "merit" and go right for "prejudice". Even where no prejudice exists in every widely accepted definition of the word, (even machine scored tests and ratings, even if those machines were built and created by minorities). An uneven outcome means prejudice. And now its infecting the schools. I know I've had people call me and my descendents "slave traders". My ancestors came from Eastern Europe to North America about 1920, and I don't remember any of them trading slaves over there, but the epithets remain. Clearly "rational" has nothing to do with these policies. What Senator Joseph McCarthy did in the 1950's was wrong. The modern Social Justice Warrior doing the same thing in the 2010's is exactly the same, and just as bad.
Outside of the University of Michigan, are there universities that pride themselves on *not* adopting this (or even adopting SJW-hostile admissions)?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's a Code of Harassment [of "Non-Diverse" Persons], not a Code of Conduct. The design is to quickly designate and purge anything as a "harasser" that doesn't play to the social justice narrative of selective inclusion.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's news that is relevant to nerds, and it is stuff that matters, regardless of which side of the debate you sit.
The assertion that I must be a supporter of one side or the other reveals a fundamental flaw in your worldview. The world is neither black nor white but infinite shades of grey.
I've done plenty of complaining, but this story doesn't bother me. It's probably one of the more interesting diversity articles. There are real issues with how minorities are treated. I work in a science department at a Big Ten university and was previously a grad student there. Many of the American grad students frequently mocked the accents of the Chinese students and used ethnic slurs. I personally informed the faculty, who looked the other way while promising that the department doesn't encourage such things. The advisor for many of these Chinese students is also Chinese and apparently threatens to have the visas revoked if the students don't work well in excess of 40 hours per week. Of course, this advisor can't do it to the American students, so they are treated differently. I guarantee there is a lot of bigotry, but this is an awful way to deal with it. Something like this damn well is relevant, though. I'm posting AC for obvious reasons here.
People have bitched and moaned about stories since Slashdot began. About 10 years ago, Taco ranted because people thought some submitters were getting preferential treatment from the editors. If you'd like, go read Rob Malda's take on story selection. He also had a lot to say on article formatting, too. I'm sure there are others, but I just don't remember them. I'd say you should post what you find interesting and generates views, and just don't worry about too much about the complainers.
Because this is a site for nerds, though, it would be cool to have some nerdy stats available. I'd love to be able to see how many views each article gets, how many moderations total for a story, and stats broken down by tag. If I click on a tag, it would be cool to see aggregate stats based on articles with that tag. This site gets enough traffic that I'd bet there are a lot of interesting stats to analyze if raw (anonymized) data were available. Why not make it available to us? I'm certain you can see that information with a few queries to the database. It's not about transparency, but because I'm a nerd and I like stats.
As for this story, theodp seems to be a legitimate user. I'm more bothered by StartsWithABang, who has only ever posted one comment though getting many articles submitted. I wonder if he's trying to drive traffic to his blog on Forbes, and you guys are unwitting participants. If someone submits stories in good faith about diversity and you guys find it interesting, post it and don't apologize. What I don't agree with is using Slashdot as a tool to drive up page views on a personal site or for search engine optimization.
If I may opine, I'm inclined to agree. Add to that the fact that they get plenty of conversation. If nothing else, it keeps us amused or busy for a while.
That said, I am inclined to agree but I'd worry about posting these types of articles too frequently. So far, since the change of ownership, I've no complaints. Things are chugging along and we're as (dys)functional as always. Assuming they're not too frequent then I doubt it will drive away users.
In other words, you're doing fine. My journal has a bunch of us in there keeping tabs on the site. We seem to be in agreement, you're doing okay. I'd not expect a bunch of changes to be enacted quickly. These sorts of things take time. They also need consideration, careful consideration, and a triage approach. It's quite understandable and commendable.
And, a reminder, the folks with excellent karma should probably be allowed to post more than 50 times per day. They're literally at the point where their karma can go no higher but they're (we're) limited in the number of posts. That they've got good karma indicates the community appreciates the content. I offer no opinion on the other karma levels or guest posting except to say that those make more sense to me than it does to have such a low limit for those at the apex.
Ah well... Just a note of thanks and an observation. I am grateful for your work and think you're doing an excellent job. You can trust me on this, I'd absolutely tell you if I felt any other way. I am not alone in my appreciation for your hard work. I'm aware that you're probably busy, there's no need to reply unless you've a compelling reason to do so.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I like the stats idea. There are some stats available but nothing detailed like that. I don't know what this shows for an AC but:
http://slashdot.org/slash-stat...
StartsWithABang is Ethan somebody. He had a site of his own (he may still) but now appears to write for Forbes. I'm not positive but I think they might be TheBadAstronomer, or something like that, at Fark or as a nom de plume.
If you want some other stats then here's a link for them:
http://slashdot.org/hof.shtml
There's not a whole lot at either of them but they're interesting enough. I note that it's got me listed as the most chatty person of the lot. Yes, yes I am a bit prolific in my comments. Most of them are even fairly long and not just simple "I agree" types of replies. Being retired does give me a bit of an advantage there.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Thanks for the support. The comment limit for excellent karma needs to be changed/eliminated. I'll take a look.
And the only thing "unlike any other hackathon" was the annoying 30 minute long "women in tech" talk that we were forced to listen to as part of the opening ceremony.
If I wanted to troll them, I could just send off anonymous emails stating a random, say, 20% of their attendees made "me" feel "uncomfortable", and they would without question kick out 20% of their attendees? I'm sure that'd generate some amazing press and get people to ever go to another one of their events. Let's do it!
I'd think that they'd do a bit better academically without having to worry about narratives.
Outside of the University of Michigan, are there universities that pride themselves on *not* adopting this (or even adopting SJW-hostile admissions)?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Those individuals are here mostly due to guest worker fraud, not due to some political persecution.
Take your racism and bigotry against white individuals elsewhere.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.